Curb your libido, ladies. How will the men like it?

Sunday

Feb 2, 2014 at 12:01 AM

"Democrats want to insult the women of America by making them believe that they are helpless without 'Uncle Sugar' coming in and for providing for them a prescription each month for birth control because they cannot control their libido or reproductive system without the help of the government "»."

— Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee

Women of America, unite! Curb your libido.

That's right. Take your lead from the Greek heroine Lysistrata, and withhold sex. Maybe then men like Mike Huckabee, opining at a recent Republican gathering, will see reason.

Aristophanes' title character rallied the women in Greece to deprive their men of sex as a way of getting the men to abandon perpetual war.

Well, there's war going on in Congress, too, between Republicans and Democrats, including a seemingly perpetual war over the Affordable Care Act. Former presidential candidate Huckabee takes particular issue with the ACA's requirement that insurance cover contraception as a preventive measure. From birth control, his nimble mind leaps directly to promiscuity. But only among women. Married? Single? He doesn't say. Either way, women, in his view, are little more than sex machines who just can't keep their knees closed. And if they can't, well, let them pay for their own contraception.

Huckabee doesn't complain about insurance coverage of Viagra. Perhaps he excludes men from his admonishments about sex because even libidinous men can't get pregnant. If they could, here's betting his tune on government-subsidized contraception would sound very different.

Lysistrata managed, with the help of the women of Greece, to bring men to their knees. Their voluntary abstinence made the men wild, willing to do anything — even make peace.

So, ladies, how about it? What do you want from your men? From your government, (mostly men)? Maybe curbing men's libidos will do them, and the nation, some good, too.